


ut-door Relief and Tramps, 


OF "CHE 


AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION, 







BEFORE THE 
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Semce OF State Charities, 
saber Sth & 6th, 1877. 


VAYLAND, 


(ALE COLLEGE. ° 


[AVEN: 
NSON, PRINTERS. 


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Put DOOR RELIEE 


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We may, perhaps, take it for granted that the principle of 
what is called out-door relief includes two conditions,—first, 
that the persons seeking such relief have a home or certainly a 
residence in the community where such relief is to be adminis- 
tered ; second, that the circumstances calling for such relief are 
temporary in their nature. 

It will be at once observed that the necessary existence of 
these conditions will exclude from our present consideration the 
two remaining classes of paupers, namely, those whose physical 
weakness or mental infirmity renders it highly probable that they 
will be permanent paupers, and also those able-bodied persons 
having no homes and unable to find employment, or unwilling 
to labor, and familiar to us all as vagrants or tramps. 

_ QOut-door relief has hitherto been mainly administered in one 
of three ways: 

1, With funds raised by taxation and distributed by paid 
officials. 

2. With funds raised by taxation and distributed by a muni- 
cipal board, in accordance with the recommendation of a body 
of unpaid officials or supervisors selected from reputable citizens. 
This is now well known as the Elberfeld system of out-door re- 
lief. It has been in active operation in the German town of that 
name, near Dusseldorf, since 1853, has been copied in several of 
the neighboring towns, and has shown some remarkable results. 
In 1852, Elberfeld, with a population of about 50,000, relieved 
4000 paupers, at an expense of more than $44,000. In 1869, with 
a population of 71,000, there were less than 1100 persons need- 
ing relief, and the expense incurred in supplying their wants was 


‘ less than $19,000. The characteristic feature of the Elberfekd 


system is the very minute and constant supervision carried on 
by unpaid visitors of the best class, selected from representatives 
of various callings., It is considered essential to the successful 
prosecution of the system that the district assigned to each visitor 
should be very small, and the poor under his inspection very few, 





(not to exceed at any time four families), so that he can do his 
work thoroughly, without encroaching upon the hours required 
for his regular occupation. ‘The visitors are instructed to make 
a careful investigation of each case, ascertaining what means of 
support the applicant may have, what relatives are able to con- 
tribute to his maintenance, what is his capacity for labor, and all 
other facts pertinent to the inquiry. The visitor then makes 
his report to the municipal board, who are to determine whether 
any relief shall be granted and to what extent. In cases of great 
urgency, however, the visitor is authorized to give temporary 
assistance, pending the decision of the board. ‘The relief is al- 
ways granted for a brief period and the cases are frequently re- 
heard and revised, Care is uniformly taken that while sufficient 
aid is furnished,,it shall not be given in such generous measure 
as to make public charity attractive. ‘There are moreover strict 
police regulations, punishing with imprisonment refusal to work 
when employment can be had, wasting the relief granted and 
misspending time in amusement, idleness or drink, in such 
manner as to render public aid necessary. The system is still 
further fenced about with other restrictions and precautions, 
which, together with its peculiar official machinery, need not be 
detailed here. The essentiai and controlling idea of the system 
is the minute and constant supervision of applicants for relief by 
intelligent and trustworthy citizens, each having a small number 
of families under his charge, with this limitation imposed upon 
their operations, that the aid actually furnished shall be, as a 
rule, distributed by still another class,—to wit, the paid servants 
of the municipal board. | 

3. With funds raised by voluntary sonbeibntiael and distri- 
buted by unpaid agents. 

Now, bearing in mind that the only correct theory of out-door 
relief is to furnish assistance to families who are not wholly des- 
titute, and therefore are not candidates for the almshouse,—that 
it is to the last degree desirable, while affording the relief needed 
for the moment, to avoid, so far as is possible, whatever will tend 
to create or foster the habit of dependence, and therefore dimin- 
ish self-respect and the disposition to be self-supporting,—and_ 
that it is equally desirable to guide the applicant for aid into 
the paths of honorable industry, to impress upon him that the 
relicf furnished is intended to provide for a temporary emergen- 


4 


But this method of relief is open to the further objection that, 
even were the malign feature of politics no longer an element 
in the problem, there remains the incontestable fact that funds 
raised by the simple process of taxation and distributed by official 
‘machinery will never be expended in the wisest manner. For 
the giving of relief in this way must always be to a greater or 
less extent mechanical, where it is not mercenary or dishonest. 
The disbursing official soon comes to discharge his designated 
duty in a perfunctory, if not careless, spirit. Heis animated, not 
by motives of benevolence, but by an almost inevitable desire to 
perform as little labor as will satisfy the scrutiny, (usually super- 
ficial), of the appointing power. It is far easier to pay to the 
applicant a regular stipend, or from the caprice of the moment 
to refuse it, than to make a*careful examination into the merits 
of the case and to repeat this examination at short intervals. If 
the officer commence his work with a conscience, he soon finds it 
an inconvenient companion, interfering with his ease by increas- 
ing his labor. Day by day he abates his vigilance and relaxes 
the severity of his rules. He hardens his heart against the timid 
and easily repelled applicant, while he suffers himself to be de- 
ceived by the whining, or wearied into compliance by the impor- 
tunate, or bullied by the sturdy beggar. Practically, he says to 
himself, “ About so much money will be spent anyhow; let me 
give it in such a manner as will cause me the least possible dis- 
tress of mind or fatigue of body.” He recognizes no duty to the 
tax-payer; he is actuated by no desire to diminish the number of 
paupers; he is stimulated by no sense of what he owes to the calls 
of suffering humanity. He is by turns a tyrant and a coward— 
a tyrant to the weak and shrinking applicant, a coward to the 
bold and unblushing mendicant. He, too, has caught the conta- 
gion which infects alike the dispenser and the recipient of the 
public funds. 

If now, to cover all the possibilities of the problem, we may 
imagine the case of an official who persists in doing faithful and 
discriminating work, we shall see a man who received scanty 
support from those associated with him, if indeed he does not 
encounter their active opposition, and when he is displaced as 
inconveniently honest, or voluntarily retires from a position the 
duties of which are properly discharged with so much difficulty, 
his place is promptly filled by one who has no such scruples, and 
the work goes on in the old expensive and harmful way. 


cy,—in effect, to bridge over the chasm between euforced idle- 
ness and remunerative employment; in other words, to exercise 
the greatest practicable care that charity shall not beso bestowed 
as to afford the means of vicious indulgence, or encourage. con- 
tinuous improvidence; keeping in mind all these and kindred 
considerations, let us examine, very briefly, each of the modes of 
granting out-door relief which have been indicated. 

The first method, i. e., where funds raised by taxation.are dis- 
tributed by paid officials, seems to us to be open to the gravest 
objections. Its direct and unavoidable tendency is to encourage 
the pernicious notion that the state is bound to support all who 
demand assistance; a notion which leads the recipient of relief 
administered in this way to accept it without gratitude and use 
it without discretion. The state represents to the professional 
pauper a vast, intangible body, which somehow owes him a living, 
which gives without self-denial or sacrifice, and without feeling 
the burden of maintaining him, and which he can therefore plun- 
der without remorse and with very little danger of detection. 
The once honest pauper soon catches the contagion and accepts 
the disgraceful situation. It no longer seems to him sinful to 
deceive the official who feeds him. To live without labor has 
become his only aim. 

Hence this system not only encourages a confirmed habit of 
dependence, and, as a natural result, a loss of self-respect and a 
fatal willingness to belong to the pauper class, but also a habit 
of pitiful deceit, maturing by rapid steps into positive dishonesty, 
too often terminating in a career of crime. The family once ac- 
customed to live in willing indolence, without shame, content to 
be maintained from the public purse at the hands of officials 
whom it deliberately and systematically misleads, is simply a 
training school for thieves. 

Again, this system tends directly to political figoriaaal by 
putting into the hands of the distributing officers a most 
powerful engine of corruption. It is surely so notorious as to 
need no proof that votes are influenced by making the receipt of 
assistance the reward of political services, in the confident belief, 
(amply justitied by experience), that sins of this description will 
be readily condoned by the party which derives a temporary ad- 
vantage from such flagrant dishonesty. That an evil of this 
magnitude is inseparable from the system would seem of itself 
to constitute a conclusive reason for discarding it. 


6 


condition of the recipient must be re-examined at frequent inter- 
vals. Those who are proper recipients for aid one week may not 
be so the next. The great danger is that those who have once 
experienced the convenience of out-door relief will relax all efforts 
in their own behalf and invent excuses for rendering the tempor- 
ary relief permanent. Relief acknowledged first as a gift and 
gratefully received is at length demanded defiantly as a right.” 

Now it will not be denied that such frequent visitation, such 
constant and close supervision, and especially such intimate and 
friendly personal intercourse as we have shown. to be necessary 
to the best conceivable system of out-door relief, is, if not im- 
possible, practically unattainable in the case of paid officials. 
For we must always encounter, under this plan of operation, not, 
only the, perhaps, inevitable tendency of this kind of salaried la- 
bor to degenerate into machine work, but also its invariable in- 
adequacy in numerical force to do anything like justice to the 
‘large area assigned to each official. If we are told that the force 
might be increased indefinitely, the ready and sufficient answer 
is that tax-payers would never consent to the burden which 
would be imposed upon them by the army of disbursing agents 

which would find full employment in such a field. 

The second mode of out-door relief, 1. e., with funds raised by 
taxation and distributed on the recommendation of unpaid visit- 
~ors, while free from many of the objections which have been 
urged against the first method, is still open, at least so far as 
this country is concerned, to several objections of a very serious 
character. Among them may be mentioned the following : 

1. The funds distributed are to be raised by taxation. We 
have already indicated some of. the evils attendant upon this 
form of relief, prominent among which is the danger of encour- 
aging the pernicious idea that the state is bound to support its 
idle poor. | 

2. The visitors are directly appointed by the municipal board, 
who in their turn are to be elected by one or the other of our po- 
litical parties. Until civil-service reform has gained a firm foot- 
hold in this country, it is certainly unsafe, in the light of what 
has been urged under this head, to entrust, directly or indirectly, 
the distribution of public funds in the form of out-door relief to 
a body of men dependent for their political existence upon the 
popular vote. The fact that this system has worked well in Ger- 


~ 


! 


5 


And, after all, however faithfully as to frequent visitation and 
careful investigation of the actual circumstances of applicants, 
the work, under this system, might in a possible condition of 
affairs be performed, there would always be lacking the most 
important element of successful labor among the poor, the ele- 
ment of personal sympathy. Such an official visitor as we have 
described, at the best, recognizes but one duty-——to guard against 
imposition. The applicant for relief sees him in but a single as- 
pect—that of one who is appointed and paid to feed him out of 
the public treasury. But the true design of administering out- 
door relief includes much more than this. It should aim to pre- 
serve the self-respect of the recipient, to encourage him in all 
honest efforts to maintain himself, and to impress upon him. that. 
such aid ought to be withheld as soon as practicable, not merely 
for the sake of protecting the public purse, but also on account 
of the evil effect of dependence on the habits and character of . 
the recipient. Indeed, it cannot be urged too strongly or too’ 
frequently that the slightest aid, in any conceivable form, which 
is given to one who is physically able to render an equivalent in 
labor and who fails from any cause to render such equivalent, is 
a positive injury to the person so relieved. 

Now, to emphasize these and similar arguments to be addressed 
to the pauper, he must know that the visitor is rendering his ser- 
vices without renymeration. He must be made to feel that the 
person with whom he is dealing can be actuated by no motives 
but those of pure benevolence. ‘Too much importance cannot be 
attached in relieving and reformatory labor among the poor, to the 
immediate contact of unpaid visitors with the applicants for aid. 
“ Hverything can be done by personal intercourse with the poor, 
nothing without it,” said one who had taken an active part in 
the Elberfeld system of out-door relief. 

In this way, persons belonging to the intelligent and prosper- 
ous classes are brought into close relations with the poor under 
circumstances where wisely directed sympathy and good counsel 
will do vastly more than the mere relief doled out to, preserve 
their manhood and lift them from poverty to a self-supporting 
condition. 

It has been truly remarked that “ out-door relief should, so far 
as possible, be temporary in its character and stopped the very 
moment. it ceases to be necessary. In order to effect this the 


8 


charity. True charity, in the form of out-door relief, is jast that 
amount and kind of assistance which is best adapted to the cir- 
cumstances of the particular applicant. All alms-giving which 
does not keep this principle constantly in view is ill-advised and 
injurious. 

Second.—The cases in which relief is afforded must be under 
careful and constant supervision and the relief must be withdrawn 
the very moment it ceases to be necessary. 

Third.—Kvery effort must be made to‘preserve unbroken the 
family status of the persons assisted where this can be done with- 
out endangering the morals of the recipients or diminishing their 
desire to be self-supporting. 

Fourth.—W hile it is highly desirable that the expenses of alms- 
giving under this system should be reduced to the lowest prac- 
ticable point, it seems essential that there should be some expe- 
rienced and competent supervising authority, receiving an ade- 
quate salary and devoting all his time to the work. 

Fifth.—The area of territory in which out-door relief is to be 
administered, if too large to be wisely committed to the control 
of asingle charitable organization, should be so exactly appor- 
tioned to different relieving societies as to render it impossible 
for any family to receive assistance from more than one source. 


‘ 


n° 


imany, furnishes, we have too much. reason to fear, no sufficient 
evidence that it can be successfully introduced into this country. 

We come now to the third method of out-door relief, where 
funds raised by voluntary contribution are distributed by vol- 
untary and unpaid visitors. It will, we think, be readily ap- 
parent that the evils which we have shown to be inseparable 
from the other methods of out-door relief will not attach to this 
system. An additional reason for preferring the voluntary sys- 
tem deserves to be stated. 

It needs no argument to demonstrate that the unpaid visitor, 
distributing funds raised in this way, will be free from many of 
the temptations, and will naturally avoid many of the errors to 
which the visitor under the first and second methods is inevitably 
liable. He volunteers for the service because he is impressed 
with its importance, and conscious of his duty to the community 
in which he resides. He is accepted because he is believed to be 
competent, trustworthy and unselfish. If he persevere in his un- 
dertaking, it is because he. is convinced by experience that he is 
engaged in a wise and beneficent enterprise, conducted according 
to sound principles of alms-giving. In a word,.the voluntary 
visitor under this system, fully aware that he is simply a steward 
to disburse with intelligent and careful discrimination funds 
whieh have been contributed by charitable citizens, will realize 
the sacredness of the trust committed to his charge, will perform 
with ever-increasing fidelity the duties which he has assumed, and 
will daily gain practical wisdom by varied experience, often de- 
pressing to the very verge of despair, but, in the long run, lead- 
ing to the conviction that there is no more useful field of labor 
for the enlightened philanthropist than the judicious relief of the 
deserving poor. 

In what has been said, we have purposely abstained from en- 
tering into detmils or prescribing any code of regulations in ac- 
cordance with which such a system of out-door relief as we have 
recommended should be carried into execution. We have simply 
aimed to lay down certain general principles applicable to the 
topic under consideration. It may be well, however, before dis- 


missing the subject, to indicate some of the points which should — | 


always be kept in mind by those who undertake to render out- 
door relief under what may be called the voluntary system. 
Fiyst,—It should be remembered that mere alms-giving’is not 





DRANSP S. 


—__-_o—_——_ 


Paupers, or those who are unable or unwilling to provide for 
their own support, may be divided, broadly, into three classes. 

Hirst.—Those who have been reduced to poverty by physical in- 
firmity or mental imbecility or positive insanity, and whose con- 
dition renders it practically certain that they will be permanent 
paupers. 

Second.—Persons fairly entitled to out-door relief. Perhaps 
no better classification of these can be given than is furnished 
in a paper in the 8th Annual Report of the New York Board 
of State Charities, prepared by President Anderson, of Rochester 
University. 

“1. Cases of pestilence, failure of crops producing temporary famine, 
accident, sudden commercial revolutions, or for the maintenance of families 
of soldiers during war. 

2. Where the progress of science and the arts works sudden changes in 
manufacturing and mechanical processes to which persons in middle life 
are unable to adjust themselves—as in the case of the hand-loom weavers 
in England, or the introduction of iron for the construction of ships; or 
when the raw material of any kind of manufacture fails—as did the cotton 
supply in our late war; ora freak of fashion suddenly destroys the demand 
for certain goods, throwing large numbers out of employment in those 
handicrafts in which alone they are skilled. 

8. Cases where the head of a family is removed by death or prostrated 
by sickness, and where there is reasonable prospect of the mother being 
able to keep her family together and ultimately maintain them. 

4. Cases where aged and infirm persons are dependent upon relatives who 
are able to care for them, but unable to meet the whole expense of their 
support. ; 

5. Cases of the sick poor who are too ill to be removed to the alms-house 
or the hospital.” 

It will be observed that the recipients of this form of charity 
are supposed to have homes in which the relief may be adminis- 
tered, and that the circumstances calling for and justifying assist- 
ance are temporary in their nature. 

Third.—Able-bodied persons without homes and without regu- 
lar occupation, who are either anable to find employment or are 


unwilling to labor. 
2 


ad 


- 10 
The second subdivision of this third class, the able-bodied 
paupers who are unwilling to labor, are unfortunately too well 
known to us all under the familiar designation of “ Zramps.” 
And as we utter the word Zramp, there arises straightway be- 
fore us the spectacle of a lazy, shiftless, sauntering or swagger- 
ing, ill-conditioned, irreclaimable, incorrigible, cowardly, utterly 
depraved savage. He fears not God, neither regards man. In- 
deed, he seems to have wholly lost all the better instincts and 
attributes of manhood. He will outrage an unprotected female, 
or rob a defenceless child, or burn an isolated barn, or girdle 
fruit trees, or wreck a railway train, or set fire toa railway bridge, 
or murder a cripple, or pilfer an umbrella, with equal indifference, 
if reasonably sure of equal impunity. Having no moral sense, 
he knows no gradations in crime. He dreads detection and pun- 
ishment, and he dreads nothing else. Whether arefusal to com- 
ply with his demands will be followed by murder or a muttered 
curse depends solely on his chance of a safe retreat. Practically, 
he has come to consider himself at war with society and all social 
institutions. He acknowledges no allegiance, he asks no protec- 
tion, he feels no gratitude. He has only one aim—to be supported 
in idleness. He has only one fear—to be deprived of his liberty. 
Therefore, the offences which he commits are almost invariably 
those which require no labor in preparation and call for no skill 
in execution. They are inspired by no motive except a momen- 
tary impulse of gain, or lust, or revenge. The sight of a watch 
dog or the suspicion of a revolver will at any time turn him from 
his cowardly purpose and send him on a safer errand of villainy. 
The strength and sacredness of family ties, the love of mother 
or wife, or child, have often restrained, and sometimes reclaimed 
a hardened criminal, to whom the idea of home was still a pres- 
ent reality. But this possible refuge of respectability is wanting 
to the tramp. He has no home, no family ties. He has cut 
himself off from all influences which can minister to his improve- 
ment or elevation. His only associates are men and women of 
his own stamp. His only occupation isa lazy, loitering pursuit— 
if pursuit is not too strong a word—of food and lodging by beg- 
ging or stealing. His only amusement is an occasional debauch, 
Insolent and aggressive when he dares, fawning and obsequious 
when he thinks it more prudent to conciliate, but false, treacher- 
ous, ungrate/ul and malignant always, he wanders aimlessly from 


12 


suspicion.on any member of the litthke community. The conelu- 
sion then seems forced upon you that the offence was perpetrated 
by some one of the tramps so recently seen in the village; but 
what tramp? Arrest one of these sons of Belial—the one to 
whom vague suspicion most plainly points—and what will you 
be able to prove against hinr? 

Possibly he can be identified, with tolerable certainty, as hav- 
ing been seen in the village within a few hours of the time when 
the crime was discovered. Beyond this, there is in many or in- 
deed in most cases, no reliable evidence. 

But this only tends to show that it is physically possible that he 
is the guilty man. Ineed not remind you that this falls far short 
of the evidence necessary to\procure conviction. At the most 
you have only proved opportunity. You have not shown—in 
nine cases out of ten, you cannot show—any especial motive ap- 
pliable to the particular case. The burden of proof is upon you, 
and you cau offer no evidence of the defendant’s past history, or 
of any malign intent in visiting the town, or of any previous 
grudge or expression of ill feeling against the sufferer—or indeed 
of.any fact legally tending to confirm your suspicions of the guilt 
of the accused. 

You will find his photograph in no portrait gallery of thieves. 
The police authorities are unable to recognize him as an old of- 
fender. He has no home to which he can be traced. There 
is no clue by which the skilled detective can follow him to his 
accustomed hiding place. Heissimplyatramp. In other words, 
he belongs to that vast horde of idle and unprincipled vagrants, 
who, by the fatal indulgence or apathy of our criminal legislation, 
are permitted to roam, unchecked, throughout the length and 
breadth of our land. 

Ordinarily, flight from the scene of crime is an important ele- 
mentin the prosecutor’s case. But here the instant disappearance 
of the alleged culprit has little or no weight in the scale of pre- 
sumptive evidence against him. It is only the customary course 
of the professional tramp. ‘To wander from place to place is his 
daily habit. 

Not to multiply, with undue prolixity, the reasons for our posi- 
tion, the dilemma is as follows—unless the stolen property can 
be found in the possession of the accused tramp or unless the 
sufferer from his larceny or his lust or his violence can positively 


11 


city to city, from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, wherever 
he goes, a positive nuisance and a possible criminal. 

If in the cities he is sometimes and somewhat restrained by 
wholesome awe of.a vigilant and adequate police, in.the country 
he has become the daily and nightly dread of all well-disposed 
persons. Indeed his frequent presence in our village communi- 
ties, has again and again transformed their quiet, peaceful life 
into a reign of terror. Murder, outrage worse than murder, ar- 
son, highway robbery, felonies of all kinds and petty offences 
without number, have marked the passage of this unclean beast. 

The innocent little maiden on her way to school, the farmer’s 
wife busied about her household cares, the aged couple living 
remote from the habitations of their fellow men, are alike the 
victims of his homicidal or licentious violence. Neither pity for 
helpless and trusting childhood, nor respect for gray hairs stays 
for one moment his brutal hands. 

As Dickens has said of the English tramp—and many of these 
cruel and cowardly monsters are contributions from the “ mother 
country ”—‘ the pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he 
maunders on between the luxuriant hedges, where even the wild” 
convolvulus and rose and sweet briar are the worse for his going 
by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in the air.” 

Do you ask why the aid of the law is not invoked, and why 
prompt punishment is not visited upon these high-handed offend- 
ers ? 

I answer, that your question touches one of the most trying 
aspects of this painful social problem, viz: the difficulty of de- 
tection. The tramp has become such a common feature of our 
daily life, that he excites little remark. To-day, there are two 
or three seedy, sunburnt, ragged, dirty loafers, lounging about 
your streets or begging from door to door. Usually, you give 
or withhold your misnamed charity, as your fears or your easy 
good nature or the caprice of the moment may dictate, your 
motive, in most cases, being to get them out of your sight as 
soon as possible. ‘To-morrow they are twenty miles away and 
their places are supplied by as many more, with nothing to dis- 
tinguish them, in the eyes of the antrained observer, from the 
villainous visitors of yesterday. 

Meanwhile an atrocious crime has been committed in that quiet 
neighborhood. Instant and vigilant investigation fails to fasten 


A 


13 


identify him as the actual offender, the chances are that he will 
go unwhipped of justice, with no result from the investigation but 
to produce a fresh feeling of insecurity in the community and to 
extend tothe real culprit an implied license to pursue, unmolested, 
his career of crime. Meanwhile, another case has been added to 
the long and ghastly catalogue of undetected and unpunished 
outrages against person or property. 

Have I magnified the existing danger, or made my condemna- 
tion of a recognized class too sweeping? Are all vagrants to be 
ranked with actual or possible criminals? Is there not among 
them a considerable portion of deserving poor ? 

The more accurate criminal statistics of England lead us to 
turn first to that country for confirmation of our statements. 
The returns of 1869-1870 show that about 60,000 persons were 
then wandering through England, Wales and Scotland, of whom 
40 per cent. were computed to belong to the criminal class, and 
only about six per cent., by the largest and most liberal estimate, 


-—and by some put as low as one per cent.,—were deemed to be 


honest wayfarers. 

One intelligent and experienced English police officer has said 
that 99 out of every 100 professional mendicants are likewise 
professional thieves, and practice either trade as occasion serves. 
The same competent authority attributes to persons of this char- 
acter the greater number of burglaries, highway robberies and 
petty larcenies that take place, and gives it as his opinion that 
if the present system of permitting professional tramps to wan- 
der about the country were done away with, a great deal of 
crime would be prevented. 

In the summer of 1870, I visited, at different times, various 
casual wards in London, at the hour when tramps or casuals ap- 
ply for a night’s lodging. 

Each applicant is examined by a police officer | or detective, 
and the answers are taken down. 

The inquiries are according to the following formula: 

What is your name ? 

How old are you? 

Where were you born? 

What is your occupation ? 

‘ Where did you sleep last night ? 

Where are you going to-morrow ? 


14 


These inquiries are made because prescribed by law, but not 
the slightest credit is ever given to the answers. The tramp can 
have no conceivable motive for lying, and must lie from sheer 
force of habit. Nearly all had the stereotyped, professional, in- 
describable air of habitual laziness, and a majority were more or 
less in liquor. 

They were, almost without exception, able bodied men and 
women. I conversed with many of them. Each one told a 
very plausible story, with great fluency and much show of 
earnestness. They were willing and even anxious to work and 
had worked until within a day or two, being idle only because 
it was impossible to find employment. But, when compelled by 
the officer to show the palms of their hands, it was at once ap- 
parent that a long time had elapsed since they had performed 
any manual labor. They certainly were not “ horny-handed 
sons and daughters of toil.” Indeed, whenever on the occasions 
to which I have referred, I encountered a collection of casuals, I 
was informed by the detective in attendance, that there was not 
among them a single deserving person. 

To my unpractised eye, there was, at one of these interviews 
with the casuals, an applicant whose appearance led me to be- 
lieve that he might be an exception to the general rule. His oc- 
cupation, as he informed me, was that of a “translator.” He 
was a young man, with a mild, modest, rather intelligent and 
generally prepossessing face. I said to myself: “ Here is, per- 
haps, a precocious but unfortunate linguist, suffering the too fre- 
quent fate of unappreciated genius.” It was, however, explained 
to me that the translation was not of some master piece of human 
thought from a foreign into our English tongue, but of o/d boots, 
(begged or purchased for a trifle), into shoes. I was subsequently 
informed that much money is often made in this way, sometimes ~ 
from twenty to thirty shillings per week. The young “ trans- 
lator”? confessed to having been occasionally ‘‘on- the loose,” 
but said that he was tired of leading the life of a tramp and would 
gladly go to work again if he had money with which to purchase 
the tools of his trade. 

There was so much pathos in his tone, so much sadness in his 
tearful face, so much apparent sincerity in his professions of a 
desire to reform, that I could not help believing that I had found 
at last-a genuine case deserving assistance. The detective shook 


15 


his head, cautioned me against the danger of being imposed up- 
on, and even went so far as to say that the man was a palpable 
fraud, but I still held to my more benevolent belief. Accord- 
ingly, I informed the youth that if he would call on me at a’ 
given hour on the following day, with any one of the numerous 
testimonials to previous good character which he stated his abil- 
ity to produce, I would give him such assistance as he needed to 
set him up in business once more. He was profuse in his ex- 
pressions of gratitude, but he did not keep his appointment and 
I have never seen him since that first conversation. 

It is certainly unnecessary to prove that the same general 
principles, with reference to tramps, hold good in this country, 
which are applicable to Great Britain. If such proof were de- 
manded, I have only to appeal to the observation and experience 
of every one who has paid any attention to this phase of panper- 
ism in the United States. 

Recent investigations by the State detective force of Massa- 
chusetts have led to the conclusion that the great body of tramps 
are professional thieves. Moreover, these officials have reason 
to believe that such vagrants are formed into organized gangs, 
under the direction of skillful leaders, with general head quar- 
ters in the western part of the State, where their plunder is de- 
posited and divided. - 

The inner history of the recent disgraceful and disastrous riots 
in some of our principal cities reveals the fact that to large de- 
tachments of our great standing army of professional tramps, 
and not to the so-called “strikers,” is mainly due the causeless 
and criminal destruction of most valuable property. It is indeed 
a significant circumstance that Pittsburg, which, doubtless from 
some good or bad reason, had long been the favorite rendezvous 
of these wandering hordes, was the principal sufferer from their 
reckless outrages. But the destruction of property was not the 
sole or the most dangerous indication of the evil which has justly 
excited public alarm. The many wanton murders which give a 
darker coloring to this sad picture of lawless violence, find their 
only adequate explanation in the baleful presence of the vagrant 
class. 

Now there can be no practical difficulty in the mind of any 
thoughtful citizen in pronouncing such people as I have been 
describing dangerous to the peace of the community and desery- 


16 


ing such treatment as will put it out of their power to continue 
their individual or organized warfare upon those rights which 
society is bound to protect. 

But, harsh as it may seem at first blush, there is no escape 
from the conclusion that when those who honestly desire em- — 
ployment but can find nothing to do, are reduced to the necess- 
ity of begging fram door to door, they must, to all intents and 
purposes and with reference to the remedy to be applied to their 
unhappy circumstances, be classed with those who are unwilling 
to labor. In other words, all able bodied beggars having no 
homes must, so long as they remain in that condition, be treated 
as vagrants. 

If this view of the case seem uncharitable and unnecessarily 
severe, let me invite your attention to a few considerations 
which, in my judgment, fully warrant the position I have taken. 

First.—It must be remembered that in this country, it is, for- 
tunately, very rare that employment furnishing some remunera- 
tion cannot be obtained by all who are really anxions to secure 
work, 

Second.—It should be borne in mind that the really deserving 
poor can usually find friends or acquaintances familiar with the 
causes which have reduced them to poverty, and who, if not 
able to assist them, will, at least, be willing to recommend them 
as worthy objects of private charity. 

Third.—(To quote from the tenth annual report of the New 
York State Board of Charities), “ Examination has made it clear 
that by far the greater number of paupers have reached that 
condition by idleness, improyvidence, drunkenness, or some form 
of vicious indulgence.” 

Fourth.—It is of the utmost importance, on every sound prin- 
ciple of moral and political economy, that the habit of begging 
should be promptly and effectually discouraged. 

The desire, active or dormant, to evade the consequences of 
the primal curse: “ By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread,” is a well recognized and ever existing fact. If active, 
and stimulated by homelessness, poverty and a dissolute life, 
the genuine tramp is ready made. If dormant, a very few in- 
stances of injudicious alms-giving will prove a temptation. to 
habitual vagrancy which is rarely resisted. That is not true 
charity, but a short-sighted and most harmful weakness which 


Wie 


& 


withdraws or suspends all motive for legitimate labor.- It has 
been well said that ‘‘a tramp is one who wishes to live by the 
sweat of another man’s brow.” The slightest aid, therefore, 
whether in the form of food or money which is not earned by 
an equivalent amount of labor, only fosters a tendency to improvi- 
dent idleness which may be said to be inherent in human nature. 

The evils resulting from much of the so-called charity of the 
present day cannot be too strongly emphasized. One man as- 
sists the beggar at his door because he fears to- offend him, 
another, because he dislikes to turn away a possibly deserving 
case, another, because he has neither leisure nor inclination to 
ascertain the truth of the pitiful story which has excited his sur- 
face sympathy ; and yet in every instance in which assistance 
has been rendered he has, probably, only confirmed the applicant 
in his determination to live without labor. 


“He tells you of his starving wife, 
His children to be fed, 

Poor little, lovely innocents, 
All clamorous for bread— 

And so you kindly help to put 
A bachelor to bed.” 


But if we indulge ourselves in the violent supposition that the 
applicant tells a true story of absolute destitution caused by no 
fault of his, is it wise in the long run or justifiable on any cor- 
rect principle of alms-giving, to afford relief without exacting a 
labor equivalent? Does not the assistance furnished, without any 
suitable return costing the person aided some honest exertion, 
injure rather than benefit the recipient ? Are we not manufac- 
turing tramps while we believe ourselves to be simply helping 
the unfortunate poor? The truthful answer to these pertinent 
inquiries is not far to seek. Careful and minute observation has 
demonstrated, beyond all reasonable doubt, that it is difficult to 
exaggerate the demoralizing influence of homeless mendicancy 
or the rapidity with which the descent from decent, self-respect- 
ing industry to shameless laziness is effected. 

The honest, reluctant beggar of to-day, telling his sad story 
of undeserving suffering and enforced idleness, in a very few 
weeks matures into the professional tramp, coining his unblush- 
ing falsehoods as fast as he can talk, receiving alms without 
gratitude and ready to “turn again and rend” the hand held 

8 


18 


out to help him—and all this, mainly, if not solely, because he 
has learned the fatal lesson that. he can always find careless or 
credulous listeners, who are practically willing to aid and abet 
him in his efforts to live without labor. 

Two questions remain to be answered : 

First (and in less general terms than those which we have 
been using): Who are vagrants ? 

Second, What shall be done with vagrants ? 

I do not know any better definition of vagrants than the one 
given in the Massachusetts Statutes for the year 1866—viz.—* All 
idle persons, who, not having any visible means of support, live 
without lawful employment: all persons wandering about and 
visiting tippling shops and houses of ill fame or lodging in gro- 
ceries, outhouses, market places, sheds, barns, or in the open air, 
and not giving a good account of themselves ; all persons wan- . 
dering abroad and begging or who go about begging from door 
to door, or place themselves in the streets, highways or other 
public places to beg or receive alms, shall be deemed vagrants.” 

Accepting this definition, if you please, as sufficiently accurate 
for our present purpose, our next inquiry is What shall be done 
with vagrants? The evil, as we have seen, is one of enormous 
magnitude, and unless speedily arrested threatens the very life 
of society. It therefore calls loudly for heroic treatment. 

Observe then: 

Vagrants are paupers and therefore need relief. 

They are able-bodied and are therefore competent to contribute 
to their own support. 

They are, as a class, disposed to prey upon the community, 
and the community is entitled to adequate protection from their 
lawless violence. 

It seems to follow, therefore, that they should be placed | in a 
situation which will, 

First: Provide for their necessities. 

Second: Compel them to perform useful work. 

Third: Prevent them from committing crime. 

Fourth: Render it impossible for them to propagate paupers. 

This, of course, involves the idea of confinement, with enforced 
labor and separation of the sexes. Now, such confinement with 
enforced labor may be under the immediate direction and control — 
of the town or county or state authorities, and for a longer or 
shorter period, | 


19 


The laws of Massachusetts on this point, recently enacted, per- 
mit each town or city within its borders, to give temporary relief 
to vagrants under such regulations as to labor, with certain limi- 
tations, as the authorities of such town or city may see fit to pre- 
scribe. Wherever this plan has been thoroughly tried, it has 
greatly diminished the number of vagrants infesting that par- 
ticular locality.* . 

The plan, already legalized in Massachusetts has been for 
years pursued to some extent in England, under the charge of 
the. guardians of the poor districts. But, owing to the expense 
of providing facilities for work, and the very small amount which 
can be earned in this way, (the kinds of labor enforced being 
almost exclusively oakum picking and stone breaking,) many 
districts have made no arrangements for what is called ‘ the labor 
test.” 

It is, however, easily apparent that this mode of dealing with 
the vagrant problem, although, perhaps, good so far as it goes, 
is wholly inadequate to the suppression or very material diminu- 
tion of the evil complained of. 

For, 1st: The avails of such labor are merely nominal in 
amount. 

2d: The vagrant has no opportunity of learning any useful 
trade or occupation. 

3d: The vagrant is let loose upon the community for a consid- 
erable proportion of the working hours of each day, with the 
added privilege of roaming at large during the entire day and 
night, if he elects to avoid a temporary seclusion from general 
society; and, 

4th: This mode of relief leaves it optional with cities and 
towns, whether they will put this, at best, aa Me remedy 
into practical operation. 

These and other kindred objections, apply, it will be observed, 
to any system of affording temporary relief, accompanied by 
temporary labor. 





* When the city of Springfield, which imposed upon wandering panpers to whom it 
furnished lodging, the task of breaking stone till 11 4. m. of the following day, housed five 
vagrants nightly, the city of Hartford, Conn., less than thirty miles distant, with about 
the same population, was giving nightly shelter to about one hundred tramps, and, 
as the Hartford authorities could not well turn applicants away when there was room for 
them in the lockup, they are said to have been driven to the pitiful device of keeping the 
windows open during the coldest season of the year, 


20 


But, if cities or towns should under legislative sanction and 
authority, attempt, however thoroughly, to deal with vagrancy 
as an offence, to be punished by confinement with labor for a 
term of months, it would result in the establishment of a great 
number of small work-houses, with an immense aggregate | out- 
lay for salaried officers, and, in every way, a very large disburse- 
ment, to be met by greatly increased taxation. The smaller 
towns would naturally seek to evade the enforcement of a law 
which entailed so much expense, and thus this poor remedy 
would have only partial application. . 

Again, the mere fact that a vagrant is found in Pigsgusset 
to-day, and, if not arrested there, will be in Hardsecrabble to- 
morrow, certainly furnishes no good reason why Pigsgusset, 
although, perhaps, a thriving village, should be obliged to afford 
him a home, and a sufficient support. Moreover, the inevitable 
result of such a system would be, that those towns which are 
situated on main lines of travel between great business centres, 
would be compelled to sustain the lion’s share of taxation. 

Once more, if the arrangement of the matter under this system 
were committed to the several counties of each state, the plan 
would, in many of the smaller states, be open to the same ob- 
jection. There would still be an unnecessary and wasteful mul- 
tiplication of work-houses and salaried officials, _ 

If I may venture to assume that the reasons which have been 
urged against entrusting to cities or towns or counties the ap- 
plication and enforcement of laws in restraint of the tramp nui- 
sance are valid and controlling, we will proceed to consider, 
very briefly, the only agency remaining to be examined—viz: 
the States. 

So far as Iam aware, the wisest and most feasible plan yet 
devised for dealing with the vagrant dilemma is contained in a 
Bill prepared and offered to the last Assembly of the state of 
New York by the “State Charities Aid Association.” Omitting 
for the sake of brevity many minor, but most essential details, 
its main features are as follows: © 

Adopting the existing judicial districts of the-state as the basis 
of distribution, it provides for the appointment of a board of 
seven managers for each district, such managers to be reimbursed 
for their actual and necessary expenses while employed in the 
discharge of their official duties, but to receive no compensation 


21 


for their time or services. It is, moreover, expressly provided 
that no member of the several boards of managers shall be inter- 
ested, directly or indirectly, in leasing or hiring buildings or land 
under the 4th Section of the act or in any contract for repairing 
or furnishing any of the buildings to be used as district-work- 
houses, or in-any contract for supplying food, raw material or 
other merchandise for any district work-house, 

It is made the duty of each board of managers, within six 
months of the time of their appointment, to hire buildings suit- 
able for the confinement and employment of vagrants. 

Proper provision is to be made for the separation of the sexes, 
by placing them, respectively, in buildings so far removed from 
one another that all inter-communication is practically impossi- 
ble. , 

It is, moreover, wisely prescribed that no female officer or sub- 
ordinate shall be employed in any building designed for men, 
and no male officer or subordinate in any building designed for 
women. | 

It is made the duty of the Board of Managers in each district 
to decide upon the kind of employment. suitable for the persons 
committed to each district work-house; to provide for their neces- 
sary custody and superintendence, and, in such provisions for safe 
keeping and employment, to have due regard to the formation 
of habits of self-supporting industry in the inmates, and to their 
mental and moral improvement. All powers requisite to the 
carrying into effect of these provisions are conferred upon the 
Managers. 

The Managers are to open an account with all vagrants duly 
committed by the local magistrates to the work-houses in their 
respective districts, charging them with all the expenses incurred 
by the Managers for their board and maintenance, and erediting 
them with a fair and reasonable compensation for the labor per- 
formed by them, and at the expiration of their terms of sentence, 
paying to them such balance as shall be found due to them at 
the time of their discharge. . 

The “ contract system” is strictly prohibited, and no person is 
to be allowed to oversee the labor of the inmates who is not em- 
ployed and paid by the Managers. 

So soon as the work-house in any district shall be prepared to 
receive inmates, it shall be the duty of the justices of the peace, 


ff 


Jue h 


22 


police justices, or other magistrates of such district, (any law to 
the contrary notwithstanding), to sentence and commit all per- 
sons convicted of being vagrants under any existing or future 
law of the state, whether such law shall apply to the whole state, 
or to any special county thereof within which said person shall 
be convicted, to the district work-house of the judicial district in 
which such conviction shall take place, for a term not less than 
ninety days or more than six months on the first conviction, and 
for a term not less than six months or more than one yee on a 
second or any subsequent conviction. 

It is also made the duty of every magistrate, justice, and court 
which examines, or convicts, or commits any person, under au- 
thority given in this act, to cause a record to be kept of-the 
name, age, birthplace, occupation, last place of residence and kind 
of employment, of all persons so committed by them, together 
with the reasons given for, or the particulars of the vagrancy 
charged. A copy of said record is to be transmitted upon the 
official order of the commitment of said persons to the superin- 
tendent of the district work-house as a part of the paper or order 
which shall accompany each person to the work-house, and the 
superintendent of such work-house is to enter and keep in a book 
of record-all these and such other facts as are by law required 
concerning the inmates of poor-houses. 

It.is further provided that the Managers of each district, hay- 
ing hired two or more buildings and land suitable for the con- 
finement and employment of vagrants, shall make an estimate of 
all necessary expenses to be incurred in establishing, equipping 
and maintaining said work-house for the year ensuing, and shall 
then apportion the expense, so estimated, among the several 
counties composing the district for which said Managers were 
appointed, pro rata, to the property tax of each county, as the 
same shall be determined on. 

An explanatory appendix to the Bill, of which we have given, 
as already indicated, only the salient points, defends its general 
design and predicts the beneficent results to be expected from 
its adoption and enforcement, in saréclear and cogent language, 
that we make no apology for quoting it without abridgement. 

It should be added that this “ appendix,” as well as the Bill, 
whose wise provisions we have been considering, proceeds from 
that most useful organization, the State Charities Aid Associa- 


‘tion of the State of New York. 


28 


“Having learned that the impression prevails among members of the 
Assembly that the establishment of District Work-houses, as provided by 
Assembly Bill, No. 79 (reported favorably by the Judiciary Committee), will 
entail expense on the people of the State, we wish to call your attention to 
the fact that it is, on the contrary, a measure of the wisest economy, for the 
following reasons: 

1. Because it proposes to transfer from the county jails, where they spend 
the time of their sentence in absolute idleness, all persons convicted as va- 
grants, and place them in work-houses, where they will be compelled to 
support themselves. The counties will thus be relieved of the burden of 
maintaining thousands of idle and vicious persons while they are undergo- 
ing punishment. 

2. A system of reformatory treatment will be carried on in the work- 
houses, and it is believed that a portion of the inmates will by this means 
be rendered permanently self-supporting. 

3. The proposed discipline will become irksome to incorrigible vagrants, 
many of whom will leave the State, and thus the work-houses will, both by 
reformatory and deterrent influences, materially diminish the vicious popu- 
lation of the State. 

4. The actual expense of establishing the work-houses will not be great, 
since the members of the Board of Managers are to receive no salaries, and 
the bill provides only for the hiring of buildings, and the purchase of-furni- 
ture, tools and raw material for the employment of the inmates. 

As no buildings are to be erected, the number hired can at any time be 
diminished, should the diminished number of vagrants warrant such a 
step.” 

Another consequence which we may reasonably hope would re- 
sult from the passage of this bill or one embodying kindred pro- 
visions and embracing the same general principles, by any of the 
States of our Union, deserves to be noticed. We have, I think, 
aright to infer that such a legislative enactment, rigidly en- 
forced, would drive from beyond the confines of the State, so 
protected, all tramps who succeeded in escaping arrest, and dis- 
perse them over adjoining States where no such laws had been 
adopted. 

The communities so invaded would soon be driven in self-de- 
fence to resort to similar legislation, until at last there would be 
no State, in which able-bodied vagrants would be permitted to 
roam at large, disturbing the good order of society, stealing or 
destroying the property of law-abiding citizens, wantonly taking 
or endangering human life and generally bringing a grievous re- 
proach upon our boasted civilization by the daily, spectacle of 
lawless violence unchecked and brutal crimes unpunished. 

If it be urged that the professional tramp is rarely reclaimed 


24 


and returned to the ranks of honest labor, we reply that the at- 
tempt at reformation has never yet been made under hopeful 
conditions. When punitive measures have been put in force, the 
term of sentence has always been so brief as to exclude the pos- 
sibility of genuine amendment or of acquiring any knowledge of 
such trade or occupation as will not only maintain the vagrant 
while in confinement, but also teach habits of self-supporting and 
self-respecting industry. 

Surely, alike on moral and economic grounds, such an experi- 
ment is well worth being put to the test of a thorough trial. 


